The present invention relates to a hand-held condiment grinder. More particularly, although not exclusively, the invention relates to a hand-held pepper grinder for storing pepper seeds and dispensing pepper grinds upon reciprocal movement of an activation trigger.
A grinder is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,749. The grinder includes a lever 80 having an arm 86 that presses downwardly on a slide member 88. The slide member 88 passes through a compartment 55 within which the pepper seeds are located and includes a flat serrated face. The serrations co-operate with a flat shearing edge 63 to grind the pepper seeds in the compartment 55 for dispensation of the pepper grinds through the base of the grinder. Only one face of the slide member is serrated and the other faces of the member are wasted in terms of producing any grinding effect. This means that lever 80 must be activated an unnecessarily high number of times to dispense the grinds. Also, the length of the lever 80 with respect to the length of the arm 86 is high meaning that large movements of the lever translate to small movements of the slide member 88. This is a generally inefficient design.
Various other hand-held condiment grinders are known, but most suffer from similar efficiency constraints.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome or substantially ameliorate at least one of the above disadvantages and/or more generally to provide improved hand-held condiment grinder.
There is disclosed herein a condiment grinder comprising:
a housing,
a chamber within or attached to the housing for containing articles to be ground,
a trigger attached to the housing,
an elongate piston extending through the chamber and having serrations along a portion of its length,
a linkage co-operative with the trigger and the piston to transmit reciprocal movement of the trigger to reciprocal movement of the piston,
a grinding aperture having an internal periphery, the aperture positioned adjacent to the chamber and co-operative throughout its internal periphery with the serrations of the piston to grind the articles upon reciprocation of the piston.
Preferably the piston is substantially cylindrical.
Preferably the serrated portion is substantially cylindrical.
Preferably the aperture is formed between a pair of grinding blocks, each having a concave recess, the recesses facing one another to define said aperture.
Preferably one of the grinding blocks is fixed with respect to the chamber and the other is movable toward or away from the fixed grinding block.
Preferably the grinder includes an adjustment knob co-operative with the movable grinding block.
Preferably the piston fits within a bore of the housing.
Preferably a spring surrounds the piston and extends through the bore, one end of the spring bearing upon a wall of the chamber and the other end of the spring bearing on the piston to bias the piston to a position whereat the linkage moves the trigger to a rest position.
Preferably the linkage includes a first link mounted pivotally to the housing and a second link connected pivotally to be piston.
Preferably the first and second links are hingedly interconnected to one another.
Preferably the trigger makes a sliding contact with the hinged interconnection of the first hand second links.
Preferably the trigger is mounted pivotally to the housing.